2020, already a strange year due to the pandemic, had its strangest day, for the San Francisco area, on September 9. The Bay Area experienced a kind of weather that few people ever see.
I woke up that morning thinking it was dawn… from where I’d slept, through the windows I could see the sky beginning to lighten, although it was about the reddest dawn I’ve ever seen. But I got up and looked at the clock—and it was after 9 AM. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. I literally got dizzy with the unreality of it.
I looked back and forth from the clock to the window several times. Finally I got online to see if the world was ending, and it turned out to be thick smoke from forest first up in Northern CA blanketing the bay area, reducing visibility to dusk levels at midday and coloring everything red, like we were on Mars.
I got dressed and, after about an hour, went out to walk around. People were unnerved. I remember one extremely anxious-looking man stopped me in the half-light and asked, “Is it really 11AM?” I looked at my phone. “Yep. 11:15 AM”.
I wandered around the neighborhood, taking photos and enjoying the weirdness. Then I came home, put on a bigfoot costume that Chris, whom I call Gene, had left at my place, grabbed my saxophone, and wandered around my neighborhood as a Saxsquatch for a few hours, just to make everything that much weirder.
These photos have no processing or filters. What you’re seeing is how things looked.
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